Relay: The Cross-Chain Intents Bridge Across 85+ Blockchains
Relay is a cross-chain intents protocol that lets users move assets and execute actions across more than 85 blockchains in seconds. Instead of locking tokens in a contract and waiting for slow message passing between networks, the relay protocol lets a user express what they want — for example, "bridge 1 ETH from Optimism to Base" — and third-party solvers fill that order on the destination chain using their own pre-positioned capital. The relay link bridge is the user-facing product on top of this protocol, and relaylink is the open system connecting users to the relayers who execute on-chain actions with maximum capital efficiency.
This piece explains what relay is, how the relay protocol works end to end, the role of the relay chain as a dedicated settlement layer, and why the intent-based model makes relay crypto's fastest-growing bridge. If you have searched for how the relay link bridge works, what an intents protocol is, or how relaylink keeps cross-chain transfers cheap, the sections below cover all of it.
What is Relay? Intents, not transactions
The core idea behind relay is the shift from transaction-based bridging to intent-based bridging. In a traditional bridge, a user signs a transaction that locks assets on the origin chain and then waits for a relayer or validator set to attest the lock and release the corresponding assets on the destination. That model is slow because it depends on finality and message passing between chains, and it is expensive because every step competes for blockspace on congested networks.
Relay flips this. A user signs an intent — a signed description of the outcome they want — and deposits funds into a Depository contract on the origin chain. A solver then fills that intent on the destination chain using their own capital, often within seconds, because the solver already holds balances on the destination. The cross chain bridge is no longer a custody-and-release pipeline; it is a marketplace where solvers compete to give the user exactly what they asked for, as fast as possible.
The three flows: Execution, Settlement, Withdrawal
Every cross-chain order in the relay protocol passes through three sequential flows: Execution, Settlement, and Withdrawal.
Execution is the user-facing part. The user deposits funds into the Depository on the origin chain, and a solver fills the order on the destination chain. The fill can be a simple transfer, a swap, or any arbitrary on-chain action — the protocol is programmable, so an intent can express more than just "move tokens."
Settlement is how the protocol verifies that the solver filled the order correctly and credits them. After filling, the solver requests attestation from the Oracle. The Oracle reads the origin chain to confirm the user's deposit, reads the destination chain to confirm the solver's fill matches the user's intent, and returns a signed EIP-712 attestation once a threshold of validators sign. The solver submits that attestation to the Oracle contract on the relay chain, which mints the user's deposit as a balance on the Hub and transfers it to the solver. Settlement happens in real time, per order — there is no batching window.
Withdrawal is how solvers replenish their capital. Solvers accumulate balances on the Hub and can withdraw from any origin chain at any time using MPC-signed proofs generated by the Allocator, so a solver is never trapped waiting for a slow unwinding process.
The relay chain: a dedicated settlement layer
The relay chain is a dedicated blockchain purpose-built for settling cross-chain intents. It is the home of the Hub — an ERC-690 multi-token ledger that tracks all token ownership and solver balances in the protocol. By running settlement on a dedicated chain, relay avoids competing for blockspace on congested networks and keeps settlement costs minimal regardless of how expensive the origin or destination chains are.
Settlement on the relay chain costs roughly $0.005 per order, independent of origin or destination gas prices, and because all orders across all chains settle in one place, the protocol has a single, auditable settlement point. Users and app developers never interact with the relay chain directly — it operates entirely in the background — but every settlement transaction is visible on the Relay Chain explorer, so the full lifecycle of any order is publicly traceable.
Why the relay link bridge is fast and cheap
The relay link bridge is fast because execution is optimistic and handled by a single solver with pre-positioned liquidity, rather than requiring consensus between multiple parties. Small transfers complete in seconds because the solver does not wait for cross-chain confirmations before delivering to the user on the destination. The user's experience is "I asked for this, and it arrived almost immediately."
It is cheap because relay splits a cross-chain transaction into three components — asset transfer, order validation, and fee collection — and runs validation and fee collection on the dedicated, low-cost relay chain instead of on the expensive origin or destination chains. The result is a cross chain bridge whose cost does not scale with the gas price of the networks it connects, which is the opposite of the traditional bridge model.
For apps: building on the relay protocol
Application developers typically interact with relay through the Relay API, which abstracts the settlement protocol entirely. An app can request a quote, present it to the user, and let the user sign the deposit — the solver and the relay chain handle the rest. For advanced integrations and debugging, the protocol exposes a stable correlation key called the orderId, which is the bytes32 identifier the Depository receives on deposit and emits in the deposit event.
The orderId lets indexers and merchant-style flows react to a deposit before talking to the API, and it ties together the whole lifecycle: the origin-chain deposit transaction, the destination-chain solver fill, and the relay chain attestation that confirms settlement. This makes relaylink a credible settlement layer for apps that need reliable cross-chain execution, not just a consumer bridge.
Conclusion: relay as the intent layer of cross-chain
Relay is best understood as the intent layer of cross-chain. Users express outcomes, solvers compete to deliver them, the Oracle attests that the delivery matched the intent, and the relay chain settles the whole thing cheaply and in real time. The relay link bridge is the product that makes this feel instant to end users, and the relay protocol is the open system that makes it composable for apps.
As the number of chains keeps growing, the bottleneck is no longer moving tokens between networks — it is doing so quickly, cheaply, and without forcing users to care about the mechanics. Relay crypto's bet is that intents, solvers, and a dedicated settlement chain are the right primitives for that world, and the 85+ chains it already connects suggest the bet is being validated. For anyone moving assets across chains in 2026, relaylink is increasingly the default answer.